Wild Parrots Learning To Talk From Escaped Pet Birds 225
bazzalunatic writes "Be careful what you teach a parrot. Some chatty pet parrots that have escaped back into the wild have taught wild parrots to talk. Seems the phenomenon could be integrated into the flock through generations. From the article: 'The evolution of language could well be passed on through the generations, says Ken. "If the parents are talkers and they produce chicks, their chicks are likely to pick up some of that," he says. This phenomenon is not unique; some lyrebirds in southern Australia still reproduce the sounds of axes and old shutter-box cameras their ancestors once learnt.'" While this doesn't reach the amazing level of Washoe the chimpanzee teaching sign language, it is still interesting and reminiscent of something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie.
So many punch lines ... (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe they really are pining for the fyords.
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There will always be more novices than experts. -- Bjarne Stroustrup
Stroustrup obviously never worked in a COBOL shop.
The intrepid young explorerers.. (Score:2)
Will now be greeted with the endless chants of "Get off my lawn!".
Planet of the Parrots (Score:2)
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Here at Telegraph Hill, I can tell you that is one scary thought!
(It's also only just around the corner where they can blow up the Golden Gate Bridge, which, if Hollywood has learned me something, it's that the GGB always gets blown up...)
Fascinating... (Score:3)
Makes me wonder how small a trigger was required to spark human speech evolution. At one time, we probably weren't all that different than these lyrebirds/parrots.
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This story is really fascinating to me as I just finished up the Hunger Games trilogy [scholastic.com]. I wonder if Collins got the idea for mockingjays here or it's just a coincidence...
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Where have you been the past decade? ;)
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Words, Not Communication (Score:3)
Parrots learn words but not language. Associating words with rewards through Pavlovian training is not communication. Clearly spoken gibberish is still gibberish.
Re:Words, Not Communication (Score:5, Informative)
You must be unfamiliar with Alex the Grey Parrot. He could combine abstract concepts like "blue" and "truck" to correctly identify a toy he had never seen before as a "blue truck".
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To be fair, African Greys are the top of the top.
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Even better than Norwegian Blues?
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Alex was a special case. He had received decades of organized schooling from scientists, who I'd like to think make better teachers than birds.
You can be sure that the birds in this article are just mimicking sounds.
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He had received decades of organized schooling from scientists, who I'd like to think make better teachers than birds.
Why ? I think that Dr Pepperberg would say it took a decade or so just to figure out how to teach him at all, which is a disadvantage the birds wouldn't have.
Flocks are social constructs, highly organized. They can include birds from other species (show me a human tribe that does that). That alone says that there is some active learning going on.
More to the point, however, if these flocks ca
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Dr Pepperberg
Wait.... really? I thought Dr. Pepper was already Kosher, why did the Jews make their own version?
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Flocks are social constructs, highly organized. They can include birds from other species (show me a human tribe that does that).
Any tribe with dogs or horses.
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Don't forget cats. Cats catch rats.
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Sorry to take this a bit offtopic, but you asked for it.
Working animals have been used throughout history for mutual benefit, and communicating with words (though not language).
Your main point, though, is agreeable :)
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So no true wild bird?
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Absolutely. We have an African Grey, and while Shredder (name earned from an annoying habit) doesn't have Alex's vocabulary, the words he/she does use are used appropriately. E.g.: The phone rights, and as you pick up, the bird says "Hello" before you do. You head to the stairway to call the kid down for school, and you here the kid's name before you say it. The funny thing is that you can't make the bird say anything... but you can't stop it from repeating words that it wants to say.
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Maybe you should ask Shredder to help you with your spelling.
Re:Words, Not Communication (Score:5, Interesting)
Or when he asked 'what color Alex?'. He knew many colors, but no one taught him the color grey. That showed comprehension as well as self awareness.
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then the chicks would be taught to use language just as Alex did?
I understand Alex had years of instruction. Do African grey chicks stick around with the family unit?
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Interesting. I stand corrected. Thanks.
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Equating sounds with canned meanings falls short of communicating. To rise to the level of language, the birds would need to string multiple words together in a way they had never heard before, and have other birds understand their meaning.
Some lab animals have come close in the past, but that's not what's happening here.
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How does that compare to IT managers repeating buzzwords when they either don't know the meaning or the word is actually meaningless in that context?
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er, if the bird portrays meaning in the noises it makes, that's communication. you're trying to demonstrate the difference between low level communication and complex structured language.
also, why the requirement to have other birds understand their meaning? bird communicate all the time to each other and often with very clear meaning, just because they don't use "human words" doesn't mean they don't communicate?
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The concept that humans alone, or only primates have language or self-awareness is simply false. Dolphins, apes/chimps, cats, dogs, and clearly even some birds have (or can learn) language and cognitive skills that clearly demonstrate capacities far beyond what they've been taught. That animals learn human languages more effectively than humans learn animal languages suggests one or more of several things:
1. That something about the nature of human languages actually promotes abstract thought.
2. Animals are
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I dont suppose you could explain Alex, the infamously descriptive grey parrot? [wikipedia.org]
Parrots and Washoe (Score:2, Insightful)
Parrots have been observed teaching other adult parrots to talk, so I'm not sure what's more amazing about Washoe. Unlike chimps, the wild parrots learned as well.
I'm not a parrot... I'm a unicorn (Score:2)
Have parrots successfully passed the Turing test... this seems like very much the same approach as cleverbot... robottically repeating sounds and phrases that it once heard without any read understanding of meaning
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People that keep parrots (as I do) tend to be very impressed with their intelligence, although it is different from ours. They tend to have a fine understanding of people's emotional states, are very attentive to fine details, and typically can communicate well. I have no doubt that they understand some words and phrases and are not "parroting" much.
Still, parrots have been living in flocks a long time, and probably don't need human words to communicate within them. If human language catches on, it will be
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What if Julian Jaynes is right? Then the mere act of living with humans and learning to communicate as they do may change the way a bird thinks, perhaps even give it a sentience of a sort.
Washoe is amazing (Score:5, Interesting)
"People who should be there for her and aren't are often given the cold shoulder--her way of informing them that she's miffed at them. Washoe greeted Kat [the caretaker] in just this way when she finally returned to work with the chimps. Kat made her apologies to Washoe, then decided to tell her the truth, signing "MY BABY DIED". Washoe stared at her, then looked down. She finally peered into Kat's eyes again and carefully signed "CRY", touching her cheek and drawing her finger down the path a tear would make on a human. (Chimpanzees don't shed tears.) Kat later remarked that that one sign told her more about Washoe and her mental capabilities than all her longer, grammatically perfect sentences."[22]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washoe_%28chimpanzee%29
Damn, that's incredible
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I enjoyed the section of the Nim Chimpsky project where they tried to replicate Washoe's success in a scenario that almost sounds like a human classroom. Dismal failure.
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Much as I am a proponent of medical research going forward, I can't help but feel strongly that testing on chimps/great apes is one of the biggest mistakes we could possibly make.
"Project Nim" documentary is in the theaters now (Score:2)
I was amazed with the parallels with Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
The Nim Project was designed to replicate/test Washoe's results. But its results were used to repudiate ape language. Both experiments had tantalizing result and major procedural flaws.
Nim like Washoe could read and manipulate human emotions pretty well. But he could not control his own.
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If the woman looked like she was going to cry, "CRY" would have been a natural sign for the chimp to make, regardless of whether she understood the human's emotional state or empathized with it.
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You're dealing with an ideology here: "Animals can't think, noway, nohow." It's pointless to present data or logical arguments to these people. Like creationists, they've already chosen what to believe, and interpret all evidence through the filter of that belief; and like creationism, it's a belief deeply rooted in the idea that humans are something distinct from the rest of nature, which makes it almost impossible to overcome in those who choose it.
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I don't know, I once thought that myself, but I simply couldn't ignore the evidence of animal research showing complex reasoning in a variety of animals, sometimes high-level abstract reasoning. First with chimps, then dolphins and parrots and crows and even some cephalopods.
On the other hand, it might not have had as much to do with respect for evidence as i would like to think, and more to do with growing up and out of the preconceived notions I'd held on to so dearly as a teen.
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On the other hand, it might not have had as much to do with respect for evidence as i would like to think, and more to do with growing up and out of the preconceived notions I'd held on to so dearly as a teen.
Fair enough, and it may be that OP is young enough to have that excuse (her .sig certainly lends weight to that hypothesis.) But there are plenty of people who are more than old enough to know better who insist on holding on to such beliefs in the face of all evidence to the contrary. This is a problem not limited to questions of animal intelligence, of course.
Check out (Score:3)
Check out Clever Hans and then ask yourself why people demand extraordinary evidence.
Personally, I don't think humans are all that special. We're ruled much more by our lower/base instincts than we like to admit. Most of what appears to ourselves like free will appears (from research) to be post-hoc rationalization rather than actual free will.
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Sure is!
Say, my cat can do differential calculus, when nobody else is around.
Hey, that's cool, I got this friend who is terrible at diff calc and is always
asking for my help... can I borrow your cat so I can get him to leave me alone?
-AI
That explains a lot... (Score:2)
Wandering in the jungle hearing voices.... "Zoom zoom zoom"
Parrots and TV commercials don't mix...
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Years ago, my optometrist had a parrot that they kept in the office. Eventually, the parrot learned how to simulate the FAX machine and appeared to have great fun making the silly humans run over to the FAX machine when nothing was there.
So you'll be wandering through the jungle and suddenly hear a FAX machine...
European Starlings (Score:3)
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I'd prefer "Look out below!"
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To be fair, I only just realised there's a great business opportunity here: for a fee teach the starlings to screech the name of a hat or umbrella company.
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I've got some mockingbirds on my property that perfectly mimic my landline phone's ring.
Annoyed the crap out of me until I just learned to stop running back in the house to answer the phone when I heard it ring.
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We've got one that does car alarms. And trucks backing up.
Re:European Starlings (Score:4, Interesting)
I had a nest of Starlings under the roof as a teenager. When the hatchlings started to move around the neighbourhood, you could hear the sounds of DOOM everywhere, as I had been playing that a lot. ;-)
There were about 6 of them going "ratatatata Boom Psshhh" all the time. It was funny.
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Teach them to 'hum' Flight of the Valkyries - badly. If i were a bird, and didn't wear pants, that'd be what I'd sing.
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Let's hope... (Score:2)
I had a giant McCaw that had tourets... (Score:2)
IT was funny as hell in college when I bought that bird that had problems for almost nothing.... $50.00 for a Blue and Yellow giant McCaw is unheard of and he was a nice bird, never bit hard....
But it would wear a LOT. "fucking watermelons" was one of it's favorite things to say. It's funny for about 3 months. then the damn thing's non stop talking and swearing get's old. it would assemble strange words together as well. I had that bird for 5 years before I found a zoo that would take him and deal w
No surprise (Score:2)
I keep parrots and have been predicting this for some time. The ability to talk is incredibly advantageous in a world increasingly dominated by people, and so there would be a strong selection effect in its favor. Since they can do it, and since there are birds passing between the wild and the human worlds, I would look for this to spread, especially (as the story says) for birds in city flocks.
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> The ability to talk is incredibly advantageous in a
> world increasingly dominated by people
I'm skeptical that interacting with humans could increase their odds of survival.
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I'm skeptical that interacting with humans could increase their odds of survival.
"Bobby, listen! That bird just said 'hey pretty lady!' Oh, do give it some food!"
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I'm skeptical that interacting with humans could increase their odds of survival.
"Bobby, listen! That bird just said 'hey pretty lady!' Oh, do give it some food!"
Or:
"Hey, look! These wild parrots can talk! Let's sell tickets to tourists instead of clear cutting the forest to raise cattle!"
Video, or it didn't happen. (Score:2)
TinTin (Score:2)
I think one of the TinTin/Kuifje comics already used this as a joke, or otherwise it was an early Suske&Wiske. Which means it's from 1960 or before, so nothing new here.
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In Red Rackham's Treasure, Haddock's ancestor lived on an island and "taught" the parrots his particular manner of cursing. The parrots keep on repeating the words through the generations, the joke being that as Haddock is walking through the forest he gets insulted by the parrots in the manner of his ancestor. The comic is from the 1940's.
The article mentions that some birds do imitate human sounds that are no longer heard, as learned by their ancestors and passed on. Presumably Hergé had heard of thi
NOOOOOOOO!!!!! (Score:2)
Rise of The Planet Of The Parrots!
Laugh it up, talking parrots are everywhere. They have infiltrated our sites and our TVs, spreading misinformation and fanbotism in an attempt to undermine the gullible humans.
Krrck - Don't tame me, bro. (Score:2)
Language is a virus (Score:2)
According to William S. Burroughs (and a Laurie Anderson song inspired by him), language is a virus.
Well duh (Score:2)
Birds have been proven (by SCIENCE no less) to be fairly intelligent animals, totally not honoring that silly "bird brain" nonsense. Is this surprising to anyone with a minimum of interest in ornithology?
Cool backup solution (Score:3)
Have Dr. Sbaitso read a hex dump of your backups to your parrot an let him go. You'll have redundant backups forever.
Re:Do they really understand what they are saying? (Score:4, Informative)
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Even my cat has mastered stuff like that. He knows his name or that it means I want his attention, and "treats" and "food" and "shutup". He also will stand near whatever he wants solved and cry. By that I mean stand near a dirty litter box and cry for it to be cleaned, or food bowl that is empty or closed door. Meaning he at the very least understands that getting my attention when something is wrong can solve it. Which as simple conditioning goes seems pretty reasonable for a cat to get.
He cannot make new
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You would be surprised. my 3 year old mental experiment cat recently started playing fetch. She would go and get a small cat toy and bring it to you. if you throw it away she goes to get it and brings it back.
Nobody trained it, it learned it by watching the dog and decided... that looks fun.
Animals can come up with new solutions. I have seen dogs try something new to get to a bit of food under a table.
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Same here. My male cat will fetch a balled up soda straw wrapper, etc and drop it in your hand, ready for you to throw it again.
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Re:Do they really understand what they are saying? (Score:5, Interesting)
I know a parrot that has put together new phrases to describe objects that he is unfamiliar with. He enjoys having water misted or sprayed lightly on him, and will ask for a 'shower'. However, he dislikes being outside in the rain. whenever he hears or sees rain outside, he proclaims 'bad shower' but was never taught that. he uses the same tonal inflection that he uses when he calls the dog over then says 'bad dog. go lay down'. He can be a jerk sometimes.
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he uses the same tonal inflection that he uses when he calls the dog over then says 'bad dog. go lay down'. He can be a jerk sometimes.
Does the dog listen to the parrot?
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We need to know this. If that's the case, the two can become symbionts, and I don't have to hire someone when I go on vacation. Parrot orders the dog around, so he's getting fed and watered, and the dog can let itself out. Exercise? We just repeat eclectus's parrot's method, 40 times daily.
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Quite true. The same way a baby conditions its mother to change its diaper, etc.
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This is especially important for animals like cats. For example, I could tell my cat I wanted to roughly play by turning by body sideways, puffing my body, and slowly progressing toward him. Oddly enough, this is the same language they use with each other and what he used with me. Its funny as hell for a human to do, but it communicates everything to a cat.
Ha! Me too! Unfortunately, I have nothing on my cat's version of it, which is to pop like a piece of popcorn in the air to about chest level and let out
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my cat appears to understand quite a lot of verbal communication and has her own tone and pitched responses depending on what i'm trying to communicate.
normally, when i say "you've already been fed" she has a sulky meow and looks away from me.
she also has a very specific meow when she greets me, to when she wants to play, when she is hungry, and when she is letting me know she is lying in the middle of the floor so i don't step on her by accident (as in, if i'm not looking, i can tell she is in the middle o
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Parrots (and even chimps) only mimic. They do not actively teach.
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Parrots (and even chimps) only mimic. They do not actively teach.
You obviously don't have much experience here.
Re:My birds do this too (Score:4, Funny)
Parrots (and even chimps) only mimic. They do not actively teach.
You obviously don't have much experience here.
He is just parroting what he has heard on the subject.
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You know with infallible certainty that the activities being mimicked are not being performed with the exact intention of having them mimicked?
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What about "Here, kitty kitty!".
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I just had horrible thoughts of walking through a jungle and hearing the Macarena or Friday.